Anyone who has followed the P.K. Subban saga from the beginning is suffering a little déja voodoo these days.

You know the story: exciting, charismatic, talented young hockey player is deemed a little too cocky by the hockey establishment, which is determined to take him down a peg or two.

The player falls into the category they call “visible minority,” although no one really knows what an “invisible minority” would be. He runs his mouth a little too much for the powers that be. His stock falls well below his talent level in the draft.

Then he isn’t issued an invitation to the world junior training camp by Hockey Canada, the ultimate hockey establishment.

Apart from that last bit, Joshua Ho-Sang’s story is P.K. Subban all over again. Brash young star rubs hockey people the wrong way despite his talent.

Tom Renney is a hockey man, not a businessman. He once ran a clothing store in Trail, B.C., along with his wife but since then his life has been immersed in coaching.

So when Hockey Canada was searching for a new president and CEO and Renney emerged as serious candidate, the 59-year-old didn't put on a masquerade.

"(Business is) not where his passion lies," Team Canada coach Mike Babcock said. "And it's not where his expertise lies. One thing about Tom: He knows what he is and he knows what he's not."

Renney above all else is a respected hockey man, and his decades of experience at the amateur, international and professional levels ultimately made him Hockey Canada's choice to replace Bob Nicholson.

When working the "late shift," I'm usually working on my Red Wings overnight report, and I'm hoping to find a few interesting or unique stories to post for my fellow night owls.

This story leaves me in quite a quandary as to whether its intensions are sincere or part of a larger PR campaign, because the Globe and Mail's Tu Thanh Ha reports that Hockey Canada and Nike are making sure that the firms manufacturing Hockey Canada's merchandise overseas are adhering to "ethical" standards.

That's a bit strange to hear, and it certainly makes me think given that the vast majority of both the hockey merchandise that fans wear and the hockey equipment that players use to play the game is made in Asia these days, to the point that I'd say two thirds of what NHL players wear visibly and under their gear is made in China, Vietnam, Thailand or Malaysia. We've gotten to the point that sticks made in Tijuana count as, "At least North American and made by people who've been making sticks for twenty years."

Anyway, Than Ha reports that the terrible accidents happening in the garment industry in Bangladesh caused both Hockey Canada and Nike to act:

The issue of contract insurance for NHL players participating in Olympic orientation camps is such a problem in terms of cost that Sport-Express's Andrei Kuznetsov reports that even the Russians aren't skating today or tomorrow in Sochi, but ahead of the Canadian Olympic orientation camp in Calgary from Sunday the 25th to Wednesday the 28th (and the U.S. camp in Arlington, VA on the 26th and 27th), and as you might expect, Hockey Canada's takng some press flak for not being able to scrounge together the funds to be the only hockey federation that managed to get its orientation campers on the ice (the Swedes, Finns, Czechs, Slovaks, Swiss, etc. did not skate).

For all the right reasons, Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson has suggested the NHL make its annual entry draft a harvest of 19-year-old talents, not 18-year-olds.

There’s little doubt that sort of change would rationalize the entire hockey system, permitting midget teams to hold onto their best players for another year, allowing young talents one more year to polish their games in major junior, letting all sorts of European players remain home for another season in their formative years.

Nicholson is serious about plumping for this change, so much so he prepared a nine-page position paper on it and sent it to NHL headquarters.

“For the most part, 18-and 19-year-old players are not close to being ready for the NHL. If the draft goes back a year, it slows down the process at every level,” Nicholson told Eric Francis of Sun Media. “Right now, everyone is on a treadmill to get there.”

Many former Canadian junior players, past and present, have gone on to NHL careers, but many more have gotten college educations as a result of the scholarship programs that Chynoweth instituted.

“Ed was the prime mover in the concept that not everybody gets to ‘The Show,’” said his longtime friend, Jim Donlevy, the WHL’s director of education services. “These kids worked their buns off during their careers in the WHL and we have to protect them, Ed said. It was part of his philosophy to develop the whole person, not just inside the boards. This is his legacy, a huge legacy for this man. It’s wonderful what he did.

“He never apologized for a kid wanting to play in the WHL to get to the NHL. That’s their objective. Ed was able to convince others that there was no question that something had to be done on the post-career education-end of things. The seeds of that course were planted by Ed.”